This is almost more of a stream of consciousness from the conference itself – more for my own purposes to gather together some useful links and impressions. Sorry if its not so useful for other readers!

Janet Peters: limbering up for the future: are librarians fit for purpose?

Considers the race ahead to include:

Customer satisfaction

Quality agenda

Open access

Shared services

Research data management

Efficiency

Innovation

Collaboration

Relevance

First thing – must create a vision, and then create thinking space to set targets and get buy in from the rest of the team.

Then you’ll need to put people in charge of achieving the targets, and they might use workshops, guidelines and guidance to achieve this. Regular feedback and reflection will help ensure that even though the road may not be straight, the end goal is always kept in sight.

(I think this is a useful reminder of the process that you need to work through for any project – whether it’s a whole library service reconsideration, or a relatively modest project. The most important thing is ensuring that everyone knows and agrees/accepts what the organisation is for (and there can be multiple reasons d’etre), but none of them should be mutually exclusive! IK)

Thematic strands of the RLUK strategy included:

Redefining the research library model,

Questions raised around succession planning, reconsidering nature of library collection/service (rent an ebook rather than return an ILL – interesting option compared with Stephen Abram’s view that you don’t do ILLs you buy the book – Patron Driven Acquisition in another form?), also consider what new skills might be necessary (and then consider what you could/should pass up – eg local cataloguing)

Influencing the shape of the ethics and efficiency of publishing

Will possible consequence of Finch be competition in APC? And really really need to negotiate with publishers to ensure end of “double dipping”.

Issue of cross sectoral work needs to be addressed (but probably at governmental level) – ie NHS/HE collaboration results in paper but who pays APC? Work by Betsy Anagnostelis in London suggests that only additional 2% rise in cost would be sufficient to licence all NHS to access HE journals.

Collaborating to reduce cost and (more importantly) improve the quality

Student funding model will create demand for better service, but still need to manage expectations

Possibility that REF 2020 will have a data management element – what are the implications? Particularly when 58/81 (71%) of libraries have had an input to RDM policies but only 1/3 of libraries say they have the right skills to help

Finch Report– covered OA journals,but didn’t consider OA data – and this is a very different issue owing to lack of sustainable business model.

Publishing article: the actual cost is not the issue, but that there is a cost is not debated. This makes the sustainability of publishing tricky.

But with Data, people haven’t really grasped yet that there is a cost, and they certainly have no idea what that cost is, particularly since data storage is a recurrent cost, and grants have a finite lifespan. Storage and searchability is essential

And yet Data is key to innovation (DBIS e infrastructure vision for the UK 2012)

Expanding access to scientific research results + open data charter (makes requirement that data is open by default, and have to make a case for keeping it hidden)

This recognition of the benefits of sharing data is vital, and it’s vital in order to ensure compliance.

This all changes the research process, and perhaps the definition of the output – Goldacre suggests that papers are a waste of time – all you need is a summary of methodology and the research data –

Tricky – data analysis is not taught to undergrad s – but it’s this skill that will allow mashups/ interpretation/ and the supply of “sensible” data sets to begin with.

But where data is made available amazing citizen science can happen (boy invents diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer / students spot mistake in economic model for recession-hit contries / mathematical problems are solved)

Lots of open collaboration makes “ownership” difficult but perhaps this too will become an obsolete concept.

Librarians probably need to become Research Technologists – to support the researcher in different ways, and so a massive re-skilling process.

Compliance will remain massive issue till researchers think of it as helping their future selves, rather than helping “someone else” (will you understand this table at the end of your PhD? Or if you want to reconsider this topic in 5 years time?)

Penelope Dunn: @lady_pgd innovation through evaluation at HYMS

Used focus groups to ask about frequency of access, type of device used, question quality/usability of interface

General agreement that ebooks support print collection, not a replacement.

Lack of awareness of interactivity option – note taking etc – but agreement that this could be made easier to use, and too complicated to reach

Lack of usability on every device is frustrating and unacceptable.

Desire for a personal list of ebooks most commonly used (wonder if this could be solved by raising awareness of personal startpages?)

Request for dual-screen PCs to enable easier working with ebooks.

Robert Kiley @robertkiley The OA landscape 1 year on from Finch – view from Wellcome Trust

Welcome position will start to include monographs and chapters from autumn 2013 for new grants, and autumn 2014 for existing grant holders – this more relevant for HSS – but issue to be negotiated with publishers.

Compliance for Wellcome grant recipients is still only at 60% so need for sanctions with teeth:

Withholding final 10% of payment, and consideration of previous compliance rate when considering new grant applications. Will still award grants despite dodgy past record, but wont actually give any money till the compliance is sorted out retrospectively.

Massive behaviour change.

Starting to include a CC-BY licence – will allow commercial use of the research output, so long as source is attributed. Some publishers are applying an additional cost, so this needs to be re-negotiated.

Measuring citations can also help prioritise workload for cataloguers – if there’s 18million uncatalogued items, how so you pick which are the collections that you should start with? Probably with the ones that would support the strategically important work going on in the university. If you have a collection about beetles, but have only published handful of papers about beetles, this would be low priority in comparison to other subject collection, probably.

Altmetrics might be useful as potential indicator/predictor of future bibliometrics